From The New York Times, January 5, 2003:

A 1960's Statement in Blue Is Turning Red

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY

VERYBODY complains about the prototypical, boring white glazed brick apartment houses, but then people make fun, too, of the adventurous microburst of highly colored glazed brick buildings that struck New York around 1960. Now those who have laughed at one of the most famous (Or is it infamous?), the blue glazed brick building at 65th and Madison, can savor their triumph: the co-op is going to strip off its distinctive facade and replace it with . . . plain old red.

Somehow, in the reductionist architecture of the 1950's, color was in the air. The glazed brick of Manhattan House — the full-block apartment house at 66th and Third Avenue built in 1950 — appeared so blindingly white as to make a sort of color statement, especially in its original contrast with Third Avenue's grimy brick and brownstone tenements. Other developers noticed the new building — which developed not only architectural but also social cachet — and glazed white brick became quite popular in new residential construction, and it lost its punch.

But as the all-white building became standard for supposed elegance, there was also a chromatic undercurrent. The architects of public schools in the mid-1950's began incorporating color into their buildings, like the yellow-glazed brick on P.S. 41 on 11th Street near Sixth Avenue. P.S. 34, built at 12th Street and Avenue D in 1956, had blue brick, and provoked a controversy with City Controller Lawrence E. Gerosa over the additional $27,000 the blue cost. But in 1960 J. Stanley Sharp, a prominent architect, argued that "color and beauty are desperately needed in our communities" in a defense of the school project in The New York Times.

Some architects continued to use the older red brick in apartment buildings — although its use in public housing projects gave it an unwelcome tinge for the luxury market — and a few favored buff-colored brick.

But something different happened in 1959. Two experienced developers, Thomas and John Frouge, filed plans for a new $3 million apartment building on the northeast corner of 65th and Madison Avenue. The completed building, designed by an executive with the Frouges' firm, the architect Anthony M. Pavia, was blue, from the top down to its charcoal gray marble ground floor.

Mr. Pavia died in 2001, and his grandson, Anthony M. Pavia III, gives an interesting explanation for the blue building. "By the time construction was to begin the rental market softened from overbuilding and the developer became very concerned about its rent-up. He told my grandfather to find a low cost' or `no cost' way to distinguish this building from its competition in the marketplace.

"Many different colored bricks were considered, such as green, gold, black and red. A blue glazed brick was finally selected because it was thought the blue would give the building a regal feeling, and also that the color blue offered many positive connotations such as the symbol of holiness, immortality and heaven."

According to his grandson, Mr. Pavia never designed another colored building. So perhaps the color idea rested more with the Frouges themselves, who seemed to have a vision somewhat beyond the cookie-cutter building projects of the period. They also built 600 Madison Avenue, at 58th, an office building with large murals over the elevator doors to relieve what Thomas Frouge told The New York Times was the "psychologically endless" wait for elevators, a rather sensitive remark for a developer working in purely functional times.

The Frouges also built 857 Fifth Avenue at 67th Street — begun in 1961 with the architect Robert Bien, who died last year — and gave its street facades huge pink-tinted lozenge shapes, although these were painted out about 10 years ago.

There are a few other blue brick buildings, like the Carlton, at 220 East 57th, built in 1964. It was designed by the architect Joseph S. Riggio and, according to an early advertisement, was "tastefully tailored to look smart." Otherwise, the handful of period brochures of the highly colored buildings did not boast about exterior color effects.
    
In the late 1960's, the engineer Yeshayahu Eshkar designed a clutch of small, highly colored glazed brick apartment houses in the West 80's off Central Park West: a blue one at 69 West 85th, the translucent green one at 49 West 85th, and a deep brown one at 55 West 83rd Street. They formed a striking triplet, but Mr. Eshkar says these chromatic bursts had little effect on him. "I have no memory of it," he says. They were designed for different clients.